by T. W. Brown
“And water?” Billy asked.
“Everybody should fill anything you’re carrying, but be sure to get enough for a couple days. We’re all responsible for carrying our own water. Grab all you want, but you’re toting it.”
“The important thing is to mark a building for the next run. An ‘x’ means nothing good, an ‘o’ means there are salvageable supplies inside.”
“What’s to stop somebody from coming along and taking advantage of our work?” Lee asked.
“Not a thing,” I replied. “But even if somebody does come along, hopefully they won’t clean out everything.”
I was more than a little surprised when that answer seemed to satisfy. Moreso, that there weren’t any other questions.
Once we reached the window, I stopped the group again. I pointed out which direction for Ian’s team to go, then motioned to the raised highway that sat on twenty-foot high concrete pillars. That is where we would meet. With that, I climbed through the window. Once Melissa was through, we moved off towards a newer-looking manufactured home.
I sat my pack down beside the Cyclone fence that closed off a fairly large yard. The property ran all the way down to the lake, and there was even a small dock. I imagined the residents’ children or grandchildren fishing off that dock, or jumping into the lake, splashing around and laughing. Not for the first time, I wondered if the world would ever approach a point where such things would be possible again. The image of Thalia running and playing chase with the kids at Serenity on the big play-structure flashed in my mind.
“Steve,” Melissa hissed.
“Huh?” I shook my head. I needed to stay focused on what we were doing or I’d get us both killed. “Sorry…just thinking.”
“About Thalia?”
“How’d you know?”
“You get a look…a very certain look when it comes to her,” Melissa said with a smile...I wonder if she knows how pretty she is in the moonlight.
“Just wondering what sort of world she’s gonna grow up in.”
“Well, how ‘bout we just worry about getting in and out of this place without losing anybody else,” Melissa said, placing a hand on my arm.
“Good point,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”
I stood and went over the fence. When I turned to help Melissa, she was gone. I looked around. She was several feet to my left. I could see her shake her head. Then…she opened the gate—much more quietly than I’d just been—and walked through.
Just a bit humbled, I followed her to the cinderblock steps that led up to the dark, quiet, canned home. (That’s what my grandma called them when I used to visit her in Florida every other summer as a kid. We’d drive past the trailer parks and she’d cluck her tongue and say, “Stevie, don’t you ever go buyin’ into one of them canned houses. No matter how pretty they make that label look, it’s still just a long can.”)
The door had one of those spoked, half-circle windows at the top, but the glass was frosted. Lotta good that did when you wanted to get a look at who was on your porch. I tried the knob, but it was locked.
“Let’s circle around, try all the windows,” I whispered.
We moved through an overgrown flowerbed and systematically tried each window. Melissa made a small sound to let me know she’d found one. We couldn’t see in through the drawn curtains, so, after opening the window, I stood back and used my machete to slowly pull the curtains apart. Still too dark. But at least nothing had lurched out at us…yet.
“I’ll go first,” I whispered, and hauled myself up and in. For a moment, I became very aware of how vulnerable I was to a zombie attack. Half-in, half-out, my upper body dangling over the windowsill as my legs flopped on the outside. Very ungracefully, I tumbled in, my foot catching on the curtains. The entire left side tore free from the hooks and, just that quick, I was tangled in thick, dusty, blue material…unable to see a damned thing.
“Hold still,” a voice whispered. I froze, and smiled sheepishly when the curtains were pulled off my face and I could see the shadowy outline of Melissa’s head above mine.
Once we got me free of the curtains, we moved to the closed door. I felt confident that we’d find no zombies. After all, I’d rung the helpless-stupid-survivor dinner bell and none bothered to show, right? The door opened to a long hallway. I could see the outlines of several picture frames hanging neatly on the walls. That was another sign. A zombie woulda bumped up against or brushed them. More than likely they’d be on the floor; at the least, they’d be all cockeyed.
“This place is empty,” Melissa stated my sentiments.
There were two doors across the hall, one directly, the other to our left. Might as well be methodical. I went to the door across the hall and paused. I could smell something. It wasn’t zombie…I opened the door and the smell intensified. Not zombie, but—
“Suicide.” Melissa elbowed past. When had she gotten so bold?
On the bed, covered up to their necks were two figures. Several plastic prescription bottles were scattered about both nightstands. Plastic bags covered both heads.
“Very Hale-Bopp,” I said, following her into the room. Carefully, I flung the bedspread over the heads. A bathroom door was to the left and we both went in after opening the curtains of the bedroom so we could see better.
“Just empty the medicine cabinet into this bag,” I said, handing a folded up gym bag to Melissa. “I’ll go check the kitchen.”
“Okay.”
I slipped back out into the hall and made my way towards the large, open living room. I had to step up and cut through a raised dining room. Canned home or not, I had to admit that this place did look kinda nice.
I didn’t bother with the refrigerator. Instead, I began opening cupboards. Some held dishware, but others were a bonanza of canned goods; fruits, vegetables, soup. On one shelf, I was thrilled to discover several boxes of Mac ‘n Cheese. The good stuff…in the blue box!
I went to the front door, opening it slowly. It was quiet, nothing moving. I jogged out, grabbed the two packs and returned inside. We had a good load out in a hurry. I pulled out the can of spray-paint and made an ‘X’ on the door.
“From here on, we search and mark,” I said. “If you find something really special…go ahead and grab it, but let’s get this place marked and get the hell out.”
Just before dawn, the five of us were on the highway looking down into the dead town. A few zombies could be seen stumbling about, but it looked like we’d actually drawn a majority of them out. That would be a tactic worth remembering.
“Let’s go home,” I said, shouldering my pack and heading towards the grassy slope that would lead us up to the relative safety of the woods.
The trip was quiet, uneventful, and surprisingly fast. We reached the campground the next evening. Jamie was on watch in a covered stand they’d built atop the building. We were about a quarter of the way across the open field when the door to the place I hoped we’d be calling home for awhile flew open.
Thalia and Emily tugged impatiently at Teresa and Randi, urging them to hurry as they led the welcoming party.
Then Aaron saw Billy. He broke past the group, sprinting down the hill, and even at this distance, I heard him laughing.
It was, for the most part, a very happy reunion. The loss of Joseph and Jack seemed overlooked for the time being. All of us live in a world where we have to focus on the good, because the bad is simply unavoidable.
I actually felt a tinge of jealousy when Thalia broke from my hug and ran squealing to Ian, babbling about her teddy bear, Dillon. That was the first I’d heard that it had a name.
We walked up to the house. I was pleased to see that considerable progress had been made on our moat in my absence. I waited for Lee to start up, but he stayed quiet. In fact, he and I were the only two not really doing any talking.
Once inside, Barry disappeared and Jamie came scrambling down the ladder they’d nailed to the wall and the ruckus kicked up once more. I foun
d a chair and dropped all my gear beside it. It was nice to see everybody smiling, and there would be plenty of time to mourn the loss of Jack and Joseph later. I wanted out of my boots and to sleep in my bed. Who cares if the only difference between that and the one I’d been using the past five days was that one was inside and the other was outside.
“Steve?” Emily’s voice made me look up.
“Hey, kiddo.” I smiled. My smile faded. There was something in her eyes.
“Did you see any sign of my daddy?”
Crap.
“C’mere, Emily,” I said, patting my knee.
She walked over and climbed up into my lap. Her head leaned against my chest and she folded her hands neatly under her chin. Was she praying? Oh, please don’t let her be praying that I’m going to tell her that I’ve seen, or even have the slightest thread of hope that her dad—or anyone else from Serenity—is still alive.
“Emily,” I struggled with the degree of honesty to put in this statement, “your daddy was…is a very smart, brave man. I haven’t seen him, but that doesn’t mean he’s not out there. And if he is, I’m certain he’ll find us. Find you.”
She was quiet for a few minutes, and I began to wonder if she was waiting for me to say more. Problem is, I didn’t have anything else.
“If you go out and find my daddy and he’s a zombie-monster?” Emily paused and looked up at me. “You’ll shoot him so he won’t eat any people, right? My daddy wouldn’t want to eat people, and I know if he is a zombie-monster, he’d be sad about eating people.”
I was stunned.
“I promise, Emily,” I said and kissed the little girl on her forehead.
“Thank you,” she said, and after a quick hug, she climbed down and ran back out to where all the happy conversation and laughter bounced off the walls.
I was suddenly very tired. I just wanted to close my eyes for a second.
“Steve,” Dr. Zahn’s voice sliced into my consciousness.
I sat up in a hurry and every part of my body protested. My neck felt like it was on fire. Sun filtered through the windows and I was still in the same chair. Couldn’t somebody have woke me up so I coulda slept in my bed…which was empty. Where the hell was Melissa?
“Steve!” Dr. Zahn’s voice grew insistent.
“What, Francis?” I glanced up at her, wincing again at the slightest movement of my head atop my neck.
“Company!”
“Living or dead?” I was awake now.
“Living.”
“How many?” I groaned as I bent to pull on my dirty socks. Disgusting, I thought. They were stiff, and I could definitely smell them.
“Eight,” Dr. Zahn said, but there was something else in her voice.
“And?” I let the word hang. The doctor wasn’t the type to play games, I’m certain that if there was something that needed to be said, she’d—
“Three are bitten,”
“Great,” I sighed, and followed her out. The sun was already promising a real scorcher.
Standing in a group next to a large circle of gravel around the two barren flagpoles were the new arrivals. The first thing I noticed with no small sense of relief was that there weren’t any children. This was going to be hard enough. Three women, five men. One of the women had a nasty scratch on her left arm that was puffy and swollen. One of the men had his right hand wrapped up in dirty rags, and another had his right arm in a sling.
“Hi, folks.” I stepped out from under the overhang and down the couple of steps. All eyes turned my way. Teresa was holding one of the M4s, but had it pointed at the ground. Aaron was standing like some backwoods sheriff, hand on the grip of one of the pistols hanging from his hips. “Who’s in charge?”
“I guess that’d be me.” The man wearing the sling stepped forward. “Look, we don’t want any trouble. We’re just trying to find a place away from the roads. I used to come here when I was a kid and it seemed like a good possibility.”
“Looks like you ran into some trouble,” I said, nodding to his arm.
“We’d been staying at the Whitman orchard. It was off of the roads…seemed like a good choice. Made a run to La Grande when one of ours got sick. Made it in, hit a hospital without any casualties.” I heard a justifiable measure of pride in his voice. “Musta picked up a tail close to the Whitman place, because the morning after we got back…they were outside.”
“Had nineteen of us then,” another man spoke up, stepping beside the speaker. I could see a definite resemblance.
“How many of those things are on your tail now?” Barry asked. “How many did you lead here?”
I heard a few murmurs from my people. The newcomers shifted around nervously. I saw weapons of all sorts hanging off these people. I didn’t particularly want to get into a shoot-out first thing in the morning.
“We’ve been moving through the woods,” the first man spoke. “Last thing we wanted to do was bring those things to where we were hoping to make a new home.”
“That’s not really answering the question,” Barry pressed.
“Alright,” I raised my hands, “let’s not get into a big debate over—”
“This isn’t a debate,” Barry interrupted. “I’m asking if these people brought a bunch of zombies with them. You should be wondering that too if you’re so intent on keeping Thalia safe.”
“No!” The first man snapped. “We didn’t bring any with us. We’ve been in the woods the past several hours.”
“Then where’d your injuries come from?” Jamie asked.
Cripes! I thought, when did he show up? “I thought you were on watch this morning?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Ian took my spot, he said he wanted to get right into the rotation.” Jamie moved to stand by Teresa.
“We don’t want any trouble,” the injured woman spoke. I turned to face her and felt my chest tighten.
Her eyes.
“And before you ask to stay, you should know that we have a policy about people who’re infected.” I couldn’t take my eyes off hers. The blackness seemed to be intensifying in them as I spoke.
“Policy?” the one that looked related to the man in the sling said with a nervous caution in his voice.
“He kills ‘em.”
Oh good, I thought, Lee’s awake.
Nervous murmurs rippled through the newcomers. I saw both the woman with the nasty gash on her arm and the black-tracer ridden eyes, and the man with the bandaged hand, shrink back into their crowd.
“Shot one a his own just the other day.” Lee walked down and into the midst of the group. “Right up behind him, and shot him in the head. No warning. Just…POW!” He made a gun with his finger and thumb, ‘firing’ it for emphasis.
“Lee,” Melissa walked down, casting me a glance that I couldn’t decipher, “Steve did what he had to. He kept Jack from having to go through the pain,”
“Yeah?” Lee challenged. “Well fuck that. I get bit, I wants me a choice.”
“You shot Jack?” Sunshine gasped.
When the hell did everybody show up?
“He was bitten…because of Lee,” Melissa said angrily.
“Enough!” I yelled. “We can get into this later. Right now, we need to deal with these folks and figure out what everybody’s gonna do.”
“My people would like to stay here,” the man with the sling announced. The one next to him—I was betting the brother
—started to say something, but was cut off. “And I can understand wanting to protect yours. The three of us will leave.”
There was some protesting among the man’s group, especially from the one I figured for his brother. Eventually though, it was decided.
“If you’ll take ‘em in, I’d like my group to stay…join up with yours. I’ll take these two with me,” the man said.
“They’re welcome to stay,” I nodded. “By the way, my name is Steve. Steve Hobart.”
“Funny,” the man chuckled.
“What
’s that?”
“Mine, too,” the man said with a smile, extending his good hand. “Stephen Johnson…with a ph. The hot-head is my older brother, Jason. He’ll be okay, Just leave him be a few days. But if you give him a chance, he’s a helleva shot, a hard worker, and a bit inventive. It was his alarm system that woke us that day and allowed us to escape before they got too thick.”
“Melissa, Teresa, Aaron,” I called, “show these folks inside. Help ‘em get settled. Let ‘em pick out a place, but then we got work to do. The trench won’t dig itself. Plus, we need to decide who will make the next supply run.”
“Aren’t we going to discuss what exactly happened to Jack?” Sunshine asked angrily.
“Right this moment?” I turned to face her. “No.”
“Ain’t this some shit,” Lee said sarcastically.
“You want to leave with these three?” I challenged. “Let me make this clear.” I stepped up on the porch so I could see everybody. “This is a very limited democracy. That means I’ll leave certain things to the group. But, some decisions will be mine alone. My priority is to take care of Thalia and Emily. To that end, I will do whatever it takes to ensure their safety to the best of my ability. None of you are required to stay here. But…if you do, you’ll work, you’ll contribute, and you stay with the understanding that if you are bitten…I will be the one to put you down. If you have a problem with any of that…you can leave. Now.”
Silence.
I scanned everybody. I saw the nods of support and approval from Barry, Randi, Teresa…all my original group. Sunshine and Chloe were communicating through sign, but once they were done, Chloe turned to me and nodded. Sunshine gave me a long stare, but she didn’t look like she’d be leaving. Fiona and her group clustered together, and I could see Lee gesturing wildly, but in the end, she turned and nodded. That left Stephen and his newcomers.